Metropolitan Area Networks

de Marco Conti

With the continued success of Local Area Networks (LANs) there has been an increasing demand to extend their capabilities. This need has given rise to Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), which through the use of fiber-optic technology offer much higher data rates over much greater distances. This volume presents a detailed, self-contained account of the state of the art in high-speed LANs and MANs, with a particular focus on the two available standards, FDDI and DQDB. Special attention is given to the analysis of Quality of Service provided at the Medium Access Control (MAC) level, and to emerging techniques for performance evaluation (including M/G/1-type models, rare event simulation, and polling methods).